


Confessions Of Barney

by GalahadsGurl



Series: The Cahill Project [65]
Category: Grimm (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, S.W.A.T. (2003), The Cahill Project - Fandom
Genre: Confessions, Family Feels, Family Secrets, Gen, The Cahill Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 02:49:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18908002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalahadsGurl/pseuds/GalahadsGurl
Summary: Hannah and her family are out having a fun day today . . . until secrets come to light once more.





	Confessions Of Barney

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caiti (Caitriona_3)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caitriona_3/gifts).



> Happy Birthday to Caiti!!!!! Happy Birthdayto Caiti!!!!!!!
> 
> Thank you for being a part of this verse! You're my bestie and amazing!! And I am so grateful for your support and love of this verse.

[](https://imgur.com/MQ1LBmS)

As far as Brian Grimm was concerned today was - without a doubt - the best day ever. The sun shined through the wisp-like clouds, while the weather had definitely turned warm. Brian had already shed his coat, and was thinking about ditching his flannel as well. 

Of course, it was the people he was with who truly made this the best day ever. 

His gorgeous wife - his red haired badass woman - Natasha Romanoff. Who maybe one day would agree to become a Grimm. Even as he had the thought, however, he rolled his eyes at his own sentimentality. There were four Merry Murderesses in the family, and except for Vika (and technically Marina, who'd taken Illya's name under orders from the KGB), none of them voluntarily elected to take their husbands' names. A fact he would resign himself to, even as he teased Tasha for it mercilessly. 

At least their little Pyro was a Grimm - Russian born Svetlana may be, but she was a Grimm to her core. After all, only a Grimm baby could have conceived the notion of burning down her aunt's kitchen at six months old. And only his Svetka - with her wide, innocent eyes and wicked smile - would have dared to do such a thing. Granted, the whole thing had been an **accident** but Brian was still planning to tell the story to any boyfriend his daughter attempted to bring home - Svetlana's reckless nature could scare off boys better than any shovel speech Brian could come up with. 

Then there was his grandson - his **grandson** \- whose very existence tugged on all of the inner cockles of Brian's heart in ways he'd never known. Of an age with Svetlana, the second Grimm loved to watch the two cause mayhem together. Not that bedlam was Benji's default setting, but he adored Svetlana and chaos should have been Svetka's middle name. Benji adored his aunt and Svetlana adored her nephew, ergo all manner of anarchy erupted when his daughter decided to pull him into her schemes. 

Of course, his grandson brought to mind his oldest daughter . . . his beautiful Stardust. His sweet Hannah Lynn - there were leagues of offenses to make up for with his daughter, not the least of which the eighteen years he had no idea she existed. She didn't seem to hold his absence from her life against him – bless her for one of her Saints - but he certainly held it against himself. Which was possibly why he expended so much effort spoiling her. Eighteen years of no tickles and no affection was not a debt settled easily and he thrilled at every instance afforded him to repay it. 

Fortunately for everyone, she'd **mostly** stopped protesting by this point. More people spoiled her in this family than people who didn't, and of those, all of them turned a deaf ear to her protestations. It was cute she continued to try, but eventually she’d learn – she may be stubborn, but she was arguing with **Grimms**. There was no argument in the world the Grimms couldn’t win through sheer obstinance. 

Currently he mused on the best part of spending the day at Coney Island with his family. The park was peppered with so much to do not even the littles could get bored. Of course, they could also create their own fun too, which lead to his current predicament. 

Mahogany brown eyes blinked in distant surprise as he turned his attention downward onto the goopy yogurt mess coating his right shoulder and arm. "Well . . . that's fucking gross," he insisted in a dry, deadpan tone. 

“Dad! Language!” Hannah burst out in frustration, causing both children to burst into giggles between them. Encouraged by her sister’s response, Svetlana flashed an innocent grin at her mother and tattled shamelessly, "Mama, Papa said fucking!" 

Natasha smiled indulgently at the children even as she teased her husband, "Yes, Svetka; I heard him. Come along, loves - let's go get Papa something to clean up with, _da_?"

"Oh, me too!" Benji cheered, hand coming up as though they needed confirmation of who was asking. "I come too! Peas, Mama?"

"Yes, _tesorito_ , you may go too," Hannah laughed, even as she pulled napkins from the dispenser with one hand and reached to assist Brian in unbuckling his cuff with the other. 

The cuff had been in place for so long, he'd forgotten what it hid. Though he remembered instantly upon hearing Hannah's gasp at the scar slashed across the inside of his wrist. Glancing around the table, he watched Benji’s eyes go wide in response to his mother’s visible disquiet, while Svetlana took her cue from her nephew as she always did. Snatching the wad of napkins frozen held in Hannah’s frozen hands, he slapped them over the scar even as he cussed under his breath. "Shit."

Hiding the evidence wouldn't stall Hannah's curiosity, but with any luck it would prevent the kiddos from seeing it. He would have given rather a lot to be able to protect all three of them from the reality of his dual personalities. Instead, he would need to expound on the nature of Barney's sins to the one person he'd hoped to protect from them. Dark eyes flicked up to take in his wife, the two eerily in sync, as he watched Natasha nod in silent acceptance of whatever concerns she could see in his face. 

The red-haired woman turned to the children and affected a cheerful tone as she announced, “Come along, loves – maybe we can find an ice cream vendor on our way back.”

“Yay!” the two children cheered, immediately distracted from their worry. The two scrambled out of their chairs and to her sides, bickering good-naturedly over who would hold which hand. 

Scrubbing the gunk from his wrist and the cuff, Brian moved to replace the leather quickly, stopped only by Hannah's hand coming to fold over his wrist. His eyes flicked up to take her in, mouth turning downwards as he promised, "It's not as bad as it looks, Stardust."

"It looks like you tried to kill yourself, Dad," she argued, eyes the mirror of his own searching his for answers. 

"Only half true," he replied, closing his free hand around her wrist and prying her free gently. Before she had the chance to return her grip, he fastened the cuff and buckled it tight. "I didn't consciously try to kill myself, Hannah - but that doesn't mean my hand wasn't the one on the scalpel that did it."

She stared at him, trying to understand what his statement meant, before her eyes flashed wide again. "Barney!?"

"Yeah," he agreed miserably, leaning back in his chair as he took a drink of his iced tea. A large part of him was disappointed it wasn't a beer and an even larger slice furious that all his good liquor was at home and out of his immediate reach. 

“What . . . why?” she demanded with wide eyes. “Everything everyone’s ever said about Barney doesn’t sound like someone with suicidal tendencies."

"More along the lines of homicidal ones, actually," he agreed roughly. Taking a deep breath, his head shook as he grunted, "It was an ugly assignment, Hannah. It started bad and ended worse."

"But what does an assignment for S.H.I.E.L.D. have to do with Barney, Dad? I thought . . ."

A usually smirking mouth compressed into a hard line as he grit out, "Victor Von Doom is a bastard, and apparently his doctors are well versed in the extraction of secrets you don't want told."

"Dad," Hannah muttered with a fierce frown, "that told me exactly nothing about what happened."

"I don't think it was supposed to. I try not to look back on that assignment too often, and I know Grant doesn't either. We both got fucked over by Doom, and neither of us thinks fondly of Latveria either."

Compassion warred with curiosity in her dark eyes and he had no doubt of the victor in that little tug-of-war. Sure enough, she nodded. “Okay,” she allowed, “so don’t tell me about the assignment, or the how, but . . . **why**? Why would he do that?”

“We refused to tell him why we were there,” he replied bluntly, smirking a little as she blinked in surprise. “I know right? Our refusal should have been par for the course - we’re spies. As a rule, spilling our guts about clandestine missions is frowned upon.”

“ **We**?” she echoed cautiously. 

Brian felt rage, hot and sharp like a knife, burn through his gut, teeth grinding as he grit out as calmly as he could manage. “Grant was there with me.” Forcing himself to calm when concern flared through his daughter’s eyes, he continued, “Have you ever noticed the scars on his chest? They look like surgical scars bisecting his chest into two sides.”

Hannah’s frown deepened as she thought, before shaking her head slowly. “Maybe? I think I remember seeing something the last time we were at the Hampton’s House, but I tried not to look too closely. I could tell he was uncomfortable.” 

His lips quirked bitterly as he insisted, “If you’d seen it, you wouldn’t have been able to forget it. Being there for it was even worse; watching those sadistic fucks slice him open like a corpse and knowing there was nothing I could do to help him or protect him. Poor kid . . . they worked him over good.”

There was horror in his Stardust’s wide eyes, her whole face twisted as she tried to understand the reality of what he was telling her. The fact she didn’t call him on his language alone was indication enough of how she felt. This was something he never wanted her to suffer through - there was a reason he never took the cuff off . . . that he never talked about what had happened. All so he didn't have to see the look of devastation on the faces of his family as he recounted the incident.

He took another sip of iced tea, hoping to stall questions until he could get his pounding heartbeat under control. Then, he set the glass down as carefully as he could manage, the tremor in his fingers obvious. "He drugged me with some cocktail he said would bring all of my darkest secrets into the light, then made me watch as his 'doctors'," he sneered the word, his hatred for Doom's torturers still fresh, "dissected Grant alive." 

Fingers tightening on the plastic bottle, he growled, "Barney enjoyed ripping those assholes apart. And I'll admit, I wasn't interested in stopping him at the time."

"Barney did?"

Brian's lips tilted unhappily. "Barney is the darkest secret I have," he reminded her bitterly. "I managed to wrestle back control, but I panicked and ran when I heard people coming. If I'd just stayed . . . I could have warned my family about Barney . . . warned them he was free. But I didn't - I was terrified of what Will would do at the same time I was hopeful he'd keep his promise."

"His promise? What promise?"

"To put Barney down, if he ever saw him again."

Hannah gasped at the statement, her hands flying to her mouth as she took that in. Considering how much closer Will and Brian were, the second eldest Grimm couldn't blame her for the reaction. Even when Brian had rejoined the family, Will had kept him at arm's length. The closeness they'd enjoyed as children, before Hoover had warped them both, was long gone. It was only because of Will’s unrelenting stubbornness Barney wasn’t dead and Brian could meet his little girl for the first time two years later. 

He smiled at her, the gesture sad and malformed, as he reached to squeeze the hand lying clenched on the table. "Don't think too badly of him - when it came time to do it, he refused. I **begged** him to kill me - to keep his promise - and he wouldn't. Stubborn bastard," he muttered, his own free hand pushing back through his hair in unspoken frustration. 

"So how did . . ." here she paused, her eyes directed at the cuff and the scar hidden beneath it. 

"I was tired and Barney won control. They fought, him and Will - I don't remember the details of what they said to each other, but Barney got his hands on a scalpel somehow and sliced our wrist. If he couldn't have our brother's love, neither of us would. He'd leave Will with the guilt of having lost me, by not being strong enough to kill **him**."

Hannah's voice held pain and caution, tangled with joy and concern, as she reminded him. "Obviously that didn't happen."

"Yeah, Barney passed out and Will was able to get me the help I needed to make it through." He took a deep breath, fingers squeezing hers, before continuing, "I don't know how long I was out after that. But when I woke up again, Barney was back in his cage and I was back in control. Will gave me the cuff to wear after the bandages came off - hide the scar – the leather stamped with the crest of our family, and I knew then that whatever reservations he'd harbored after my return to the family were gone. It was liberating, to say the least."

"Liberating? Dad, you almost died!" 

"I know . . . but I also **won**. I wrestled back sole control from Barney, and I've maintained it ever since. When he bangs on his cage now, screaming to be let out, it's easier to ignore him. I don't struggle with him anymore, not like I used to."

Hannah’s eyes lightened further at the insistence, before teasing curved the corner of her lips. “Still crazy though.”

“Always crazy,” he agreed with a cheerful smirk. “Seriously, Stardust, being sane is boring – you really should join us on the wild side.”

“Who else is going to talk you out of trouble, Dad?”

Wrapping his arms around her shoulders, he pulled her in for a tight hug, before pressing a warm kiss to her forehead. “That’s my girl.”

“Always, Dad.”


End file.
